Monday, December 5, 2016

The most recent set of fundraising data for the Conservative leadership race put Kellie Leitch narrowly ahead of Maxime Bernier in total dollars raised. But an analysis of where these contributions came from suggests Bernier has a bigger and broader base of national support within the party — and that puts him in a much better position to win than Leitch. Between April 1 and Sept. 30, the latest data available from Elections Canada, Leitch raised $450,421.56, a little more than Bernier's $427,508.72. Ontario MP Michael Chong raised $208,913.72, while Alberta MP Deepak Obhrai raised $1,100.The other 10 contestants either launched their campaigns after Sept. 30 or had no contributions to report prior to that date.Taking into account individuals who made multiple contributions and counting them only once, Bernier raised his money from 1,788 individual contributors, compared to 1,049 for Leitch, 370 for Chong and two for Obhrai. In other words, Bernier received money from 56 per cent of all donors to the race in this period, compared to 33 per cent for Leitch and 11.5 per cent for Chong.But over and above Bernier's advantage in the number of donors, he has a superior regional distribution of that support than does either Leitch or Chong.And that's a decisive factor in the Conservative leadership race.You can read the rest of this article here.

12 comments:

Completely agree. It parallels Donald Trump making Ted Cruz look mainstream. I'm not sure Leitch is electable in competition with Trudeau, as she's more likely to stimulate the opposition base. Clinton probably wouldn't have won the popular vote against a regular republican.

You guys are underestimating Kellie Leitch. She is Jim Flaherty's protoge after all.

Many Canbadians think our immigration system is in need of reform-the outrrageous housing prices in parts of B.C. and Ontario only strengthen the need. Canada has done very well from globalisation and free trade but not all Canadians have done well, there have been almost as many losers as winners. Families split because they can no longer afford to buy a house in the neighbourhood where they were raised. On the West Coast an epidemic of Chinese corruption and embezzlemenert from the Chinese State and its businesses, organs etc...have saturated the housing market with ill-begotten money. These people are willing to risk execution to steal millions from the Chinese State-Do you really think they'll be honest when filing their Canadian income taxes? Come on! We let in many thousands of white collar criminals every year from all over the world. The family of the former dictator of Tunisia, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali own a multi-million dollar property in Westmount. A few years back we let in a Rwandan war criminal. We can't expect perfection but, we should expect better.

The immigration system definitely needs reform. An arbitrary "Canadian values" test isn't going to make Canada safer or more homogeneous. Austrilia has an "Austrilian Values Statement" and character requirements and yet have had more domestic terror incidences than Canada since 2001.

Less PR are settling in BC and Ontario than 10 years ago. The government should be incentivizing rural settlement (Ontario has the northern tax credit and a 5-year rural commitment for International Medical Graduates who become doctors here). Foreign investment should be taxed (look at the change in the Vancouver housing market after their 15% surcharge) and the millionaire visa progam disbanded or raised from $2M and conditions added of actually investing venture capital in Canada.

In a world where Rob Ford and Donald Trump can hold public office, Kellie Leitch has a strong chance if she wins the CPC leadership (I'm holding out hope for a late Peter MacKay entry). However, like Tim Hudak, she gives the Liberals the opertunity to fight on social issues. Whether or not she supported the idea, there is a sound clip of her saying "barbaric cultural practices" but also saying "Canadians value freedom of religion. Full stop. That includes all religions. Full stop." That's not really true, as the "niqab controversy" showed. There is a strong tolerance for freedom of religion, but only to the point were it is compatible with other areas of people's self-identity.

Harper did very poorly with immigrants (overall, but much worse with immigrants since 1981) in 2015. The NDP and BQ did very well with people born in their province of residence while the CPC and Greens did will with those born outside their province of residence.

What is Leitch's path to victory? Giving her historic highs for the CPC everywhere else (26/42 BC, 33/34 AB, 24/28 SK+MB, 12/78 QC, 8/10 NB, 11/25 other), she still needs 57 seats in Ontario. If you exclude Toronto, York and Peel, that's winning every seat in the north/east/capital regions plus 70% in the southwest. The path to a majority is there, but thin. The 905 is traditionally a rich potential source of seats for the CPC, but are more people going to turn out to vote on their desire to exclude certain immigrants or to protect the priviledges that they enjoyed coming to Canada?

I hope that the CPC still needs the progressive conservative vote to gain a majority.

Have you seen how well the provincial Liberals are doing in Ontario? The way Wynne is going "Liberal" will be a bad word by the time Justin seeks re-election. Canadians usually differentiate between federal and provincial politics but, since Justin has undertaken Wynne's cash-for access policy and is now involved in his own though related scandal whoever wins the Conservative leadership may find Ontario seats easy pickings as voters once again move away from a disgraced Liberal Party. Resign Justin! Resign!

My sense of it is that Ira had it just about right. My gut is telling me that Bernier is the person the CPC will rally around, even though he is a flawed candidate. Bernier could pick up considerable traction in the West and could possibly do better than Harper in Quebec. We'll see. It would help Bernier enormously if he did a Clark-MacDonald deal with Blaney before the leadership race ends.

Bernier is emerging as one of the front runners. Hard to say definitively this far out, however; Bernier, Leitch and Scheer appear to be in front with Lisa Raitt and Erin O'toole in the second tier. I think Deepak Ohbrai will surprise people at how well he does. He is a warm and engaging politician.

To me it appears Scheer is emerging as the consensus candidate. He should have a strong base out West. Is it enough to get him to the final round?

The Liberals are planning something funny with that survey. To be categorized at the end was strange and the zero-sum nature of the questions left little room for nuance. It looks like they want Canadians to say they want more diversity in Parliament but, it is almost sinister how they get there.

Yes. I completed the survey. It was strange, the end categorization made me uncomfortable. Why are they dividing Canadians into these four categories?

Maybe Trudeua has just given up on Monsef. It sure looks like they have hung her out to dry. This was always going to be a difficult file, given the opposition of the Tories and Bloc. Why would the prime minister leave it in the hands of his most inexperienced cabinet minister? I think Liberals (ie. the Cabinet) have realized electoral reform is a vote loser for the party. Or perhaps the backbench has woken up and come to the conclusion reform puts most if not all their seats in danger. Either way it either isn't going to happen or they will manipulate the survey results with its strange categories into saying most Canadians want a change. Although at this point any news other than the Cash for access scandal with Chinese billionaires is good news for Trudeau. They're riding high in the polls now but, they've also just lost most of their support among Aboriginals with their pipeline decision, a softwood lumber dispute with America is around the corner and an unbalanced budget coming up in late February or early March. I hope Justin is enjoying the dog days of his political honeymoon, I don't think things will look as rosy in the Spring.

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